Isn't the most crucial piece of info in this thread that someone who is involved in the internet audio community, aware of HA, and I presume doesn't have an ego investment in --r3mix is intentionally sending newbies there instead of here? Dors may have his reasons for thinking that HA is less n00b-friendly than r3mix.net, and if others share his opinion, here is where some dialogue and some persuasion would do some good. I'm all for some honest criticism of misinformation at r3mix.net and applying some vocal pressure to change it, but I would guess that the likelihood of Roel changing his site to say that his preset is outdated and his analysis is faulty is small.

The difference between HA and r3mix is very basic :
When clicking "technical articles" is HA, we get the following message :

This feature is not yet implemented. Check back shortly.

I insist on the "shortly", that must be there since many monthes, and clicking on the MP3 FAQ, we get

Question :
Answer :

I think HA lacks tutorials about what it deals with. R3mix had Roel's pages. People began by reading the site, and then came to discuss about it in the forum.
Doom9 has a lot of tutorials, and in the forums, people can discuss them. CDRinfo and CD Freaks have a lot of in depht technical papers online in their home page...

I think that the anti-newbie image that we have got comes from this. Here, people are supposed to have a knowledge by themselves in order to take part in the discussions, we're not providing any basis on which newbies could start from nothing.

On the other hand, I don't find it so negative. I use to browse www.hardware.fr forums. It's the perfect example (in french) of newbie forums : several thousand message per DAY ! Very difficult to hold any discussion, because in the ten minutes after someone asks a question, there are already 10 stupid answers from other newbies.

HA have earned its reputation as it is : IMHO a place for discussions at whatever knowledge level, but always with a scientific background. The danger would be to have the same members again and again, talking between themselves. Fortunately I don't feel that HA is exposed to this for the time being. It rather seems in a dynamic stage.

I think this dynamics must take shape into some pages, papers, or FAQs summarizing what is discussed in the forums. Administrators are working on it, but myself, I see nothing else than the FAQ-in-development section, that hasn't moved since some weeks. I've got some papers scattered here and there about experiments I've done measuring the losslessness of SPDIF, the offset of drives, the analog frequency response of a CD player, and the audibility of ultrasonics harmonics in music.
But not knowing what's up with HA's developments, I'm just putting them in my private webspace for the time being.

Just a few things to clarify: In the past, I've rerouted newbies to r3mix.net and SATCP tutorials. Recently, I've added HA as a link as well as pointed out the FAQ thread on both forums. I belive r3mix.net and HA appeal in large parts to different audiences, so I think that's no problem.

Also, as pointed out in some posts before, if HA puts up some nice FAQs and technical papers, some intro to the whole thing, I'd probably reconsider my rerouting again. A one stop solution for newbies would probably preferable. BTW: I'm open for any suggestion, I'm not monitoring the whole mp3/LAME scene that actively as I did in past times.

Finally, I'm all against removing the --r3mix switch. With the arguments I've read, you could also demand that other "harmful" switches should go away. Or even better: disable all switches and tell people to use Vorbis instead. And who are we anyway to tell people what to use, and what not?

And I still stand by saying that Roel did some very important things that helped the whole audio community. Dibrom came aboard later and probably did even more for it (and more important, is still actively helping it, contrary to Roel), but still, not acknowledging what he did, even if he (and his switch) certainly has some "flaws", seems just wrong to me.

Originally posted by Pio2001 I've got some papers scattered here and there about experiments I've done measuring the losslessness of SPDIF, the offset of drives, the analog frequency response of a CD player, and the audibility of ultrasonics harmonics in music.
But not knowing what's up with HA's developments, I'm just putting them in my private webspace for the time being.

Originally posted by Pio2001 On the other hand, I don't find it so negative. I use to browse www.hardware.fr forums. It's the perfect example (in french) of newbie forums : several thousand message per DAY ! Very difficult to hold any discussion, because in the ten minutes after someone asks a question, there are already 10 stupid answers from other newbies.

Originally posted by Pio2001 Is there already somewhere a test result showing that --alt-preset 160 or 170, something like that, is better than --r3mix ?

Well, since there is no more answer here than at r3mix where if I remember well I saw the question asked once at least, I'm going to open my big mouth and put my foot in it !

I checked r3mix website and saw the r3mix switch had a 170-175 kbps average. Knowing that --alt-preset standard was higher, and that the use of -Y is not really what we seek, I went into the recommended Lame settings and found no VBR setting for this bitrate.
Therefore I went for --alt-preset 173 and encoded some samples :

Originally posted by Pio2001 One must keep in mind also that, if --alt-preset standard is 192 kbps in average, the difference is only 11% with alt-preset 173.

But only --alt-preset standard,extreme and insane are code-level tweaked.

Anyway, there may be hope for going lower bitrate while keeping high quality, by using Naoki's sub-step noise shaping. I think when hopefully at some point there will be a new --alt-preset setting, it will use that with some code-level tweaks.
Should be possible to go near 160-170kbps average while maintaining pretty nice quality.

Substep noise shaping should help with the missing sfb21/bloated bitrate problem, and it could further increase quality..
Unfortunately seems that nspsytune2 is not going to happen anytime soon. Naoki has practically disappeared...

1. More than likely, anyone reading r3mix or HA wants to learn how to create, to one degree or another, a high quality mp3.
2. More often than not, they have a substantial collection of music.
3. There is a tremendous difference in --r3mix and --aps as a starting point for compressing a collection (or in my case --ape-Z and mpc--quality7and8). Will I abandon switches and formats for higher quality as improvements are made? - you bet - but I think it will be a long time before I want re-encode everything from scratch. That wouldn't be the case with --r3mix.
4. Roel deserves credit for his (past) contribution and for the role he played.
5. Yes, HA needs to add some tutorials, a concise crash course for newbies, papers, etc., etc.. But it's not like a newbie can't come in here and get help. I'll admit to having done some homework prior to my initial post here - most of it here after doing SatCP's tutorial. And when I needed help to go further, I posted. How long did it take to get the help I needed, on a Sunday evening? Just a couple of hours, thanks to Sometimes Warrior, JohnV, quellcore, smg, kdo, and others. It would have been nice to have been able to do all the homework here - and sooner is better but I suspect this is a very large project, and like everything else around here, it's important that it be done right.
6. It's important that the boards stay as they are, and not get clogged up with newbie stuff, as previously mentioned. There's a lot of time involved as it is. I posted little at first because I felt there was nothing I could add - that's the way it should be. That said, all the newbie posts (even at level 0) I've seen that were serious, have received kind and informative responses.

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originally posted by dorsAnd who are we anyway to tell people what to use, and what not?

Simple. You are people who have learned and have become very proficient at something. Morally, if anything, you have a certain responsibility to share that knowledge with others who desire it.

Originally posted by dors Finally, I'm all against removing the --r3mix switch. With the arguments I've read, you could also demand that other "harmful" switches should go away.

Well first of all, we have been demanding this... The fact that people come up with commandlines 40 switches long or so is evidence enough that there's something wrong here.

In a project like LAME, when does one decide to remove the old and non-optimal code for the sake of streamlining, consolidation, and ease of use? In my opinion, it's more important for a project to move forward and to do this, than to cater to someone's ego.

--r3mix had it's place when there was nothing else. Now it's just as bad as the default presets in LAME, which really shouldn't be there anymore either. The problem is that everyone is to caught up in this ego thing. Nobody wants to remove --r3mix because it might "hurt" Roel. To that I say: WTF? Since when did the focus of the LAME project shift from being the best mp3 encoder, providing real improvements, to instead being a personal code deposit box (I think I'll add another preset with my name on it, thank you very much.. howabout a --hydrogenaudio-0wn$-j00 switch?) and a cache for ego tripping?

The truth of the matter is that --r3mix should have never even been included in LAME in the first place. That was a very bad call on the developers parts. Instead, r3mix should have been an .exe frontend or something which would just call Roel's preferred switches.

--r3mix never has really followed the progress of the other code in LAME, and it's not really an integral part of LAME. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Instead of following naming conventions, it has Roel's nick stamped on it. Instead of fitting into an easy to use preset system which makes sense, it just kind of hangs out there on its own. It's basically Roel's personal space in each LAME encoder.. and I don't see why that should be, especially when it's obvious he doesn't have any interest in even maintaining it anymore. The whole thing is not really in the spirit of LAME as an encoder, it's in the spirit of Roel and his website encroaching upon the project.

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[b]Or even better: disable all switches and tell people to use Vorbis instead. And who are we anyway to tell people what to use, and what not?

How do you go from disabling non-optimal code in LAME to instead pointing people towards Vorbis? That makes absolutely no sense.

You're basically saying that instead of trying to improve the usability of LAME, we shouldn't bother because it might be "harmful" to some people (most likely their ego), so instead we should drop it all together and just point them somewhere else? I don't get it.

And who are we to tell people what to use? Well as the people who actually work on LAME (speaking for myself and at least a handful of other LAME devs on this board), it's our responsibility to make sure that LAME works well, that it is designed well, and that it continues to improve in all areas possible. If this means ease of use, or improved usability (by removing non-optimal and confusing switches), then so be it.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who disagrees with this can go make their own version of LAME. That's another thing that probably should have been done for this whole --r3mix thing, if not a frontend instead. Then, when Roel decided to no longer be involved in the mp3 community, the official encoder would no longer be burdened by his outdated preset. Instead as his encoder went out of date, people would naturally move back to the official LAME where improvements are continuing (well.. at least sort of, but they continued beyond what Roel did at least).

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[b]And I still stand by saying that Roel did some very important things that helped the whole audio community. Dibrom came aboard later and probably did even more for it (and more important, is still actively helping it, contrary to Roel), but still, not acknowledging what he did, even if he (and his switch) certainly has some "flaws", seems just wrong to me.

Sure. Roel did some useful things to start with. However, it became apparent over time that his intentions were not in the best interest of the community, but rather more in the line of self promotion.

I personally ran into this and was involved in some rather unpleasant situations. My original intentions were, believe it or not, to actually work with Roel. Since this got thrown back in my face time and time again, it's easy for me to simply disregard Roel's "contributions". I mean, if the actual intent behind accomplishments is not honest, does that still make the accomplishments meaningful? To me, it doesn't really. Perhaps I value integrity too highly though..

This is probably the last I'm going to say on this matter. If people want to recommend newbies to r3mix.net, there's nothing anyone can really do to stop it. However, this person is making a big mistake, and in the end it's only going to come back to be harmful to the community and to promote the kind of thinking we've been subjected to lately on Slashdot and Arstechnica. Oh well..

Eventually, HA will have guides, it will have FAQs, and it will have user driven content. I hope that might make a difference in deterring some people from pointing others to outdated and invalid information, but who really knows.

Originally posted by Pio2001 I checked r3mix website and saw the r3mix switch had a 170-175 kbps average. Knowing that --alt-preset standard was higher, and that the use of -Y is not really what we seek, I went into the recommended Lame settings and found no VBR setting for this bitrate.

Before I recently devoted all of my time to getting our new project off the ground, about 3 or 4 weeks ago I had actually created a new preset using Takehiro's experimental CVS branch. The bitrate is significantly lower than --aps (sometimes a good bit lower than --r3mix even), and the quality on difficult samples is usually much higher than --r3mix. However, there were still some tuning issues that I didn't have time to work out. Once things with our new project get straightened out, I plan to go back to this and to create 2 more vbr presets. One which is at the --r3mix bitrate, and one which is even lower. Of course, these presets wont offer transparency to the degree that aps will.. but they should still be pretty much equal to or better than r3mix at lower or equal bitrates I think.

I will be making use of -Y too. The difficult part about this will be convincing people to use their ears to find that this preset which does not encode as much over 16khz as --r3mix, still actually sounds better in almost all cases. People are going to use graphs and have a field day with this one...

Originally posted by Joe Bloggs I want to see a comparison of the --r3mix and aps switches. I haven't been able to see any expanded version of --aps or any other --alt-presents ???

--alt-preset doesn't have any switches like --r3mix, instead it's "adaptive" and change settings when needed during the encoding... Since --alt-preset can do that, it can simply encode music in higher quality... I think there's a FAQ describing how --alt-preset works... In one way or another anyway...

Originally posted by Dibrom HA is here to help people learn how to work with audio compression. It's here to increase the knowledge base and to provide a place for relatively BS-free quality discussion. It's a place for people to perform objective testing, and share information.

SURE. But that doesn't answer my question. Why is the disinformation of others a "problem" for Garf?

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It promotes poor testing methodology (did you see some of the comments on slashdot and arstechnica about ff123s test?) within the audio community, and eventually, it hampers progress.

I still don't "get it"? How do disinformed people "hamper progress"? Progress isn't made by disinformed people, it's made by INFORMED people. If someone's not intelligent enough to see through Roel's bogus crap or interested enough to seek out accurate information, how helpful to "progress" can they ever BE?

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Surely you can see this. If you feel that none of the above points are worth anything, and I'm not saying that's what you are implying, but if you don't understand why these are good things and why what r3mix.net stands for is not, then I'm not quite sure what you see in this community as a whole. I don't understand where the desire to participate would stem from.

Of COURSE I understand and appreciate the reasons why HA is the way it is! HA is a GODSEND for people seeking accurate unbiased information on audio encoding. What I don't understand is why sites that promote disinformation are a "problem" for US. Heck, if it weren't for THEM, there wouldn't be a NEED for HA. There will ALWAYS be people with ulterior motives spreading disinformation. If not Roel, then Bill Gates. Do you think HE will ever stop doing it? If people aren't intelligent or interested enough to seek out accurate information, that's really THEIR problem - not OURS. IMHO

Friend? Do we know each other? I don't intend for that to be sarcastic, just curious if we met before. Perhaps under a different username? Either way, any friend of mine is... a friend of mine!

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Disinformation is not a problem for the informed.

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!

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But have you no concern for the community at large?

Sure, I'm a VERY concerned citizen! Generally, I make other people's problems my problems. If a stranger is hungry, I feed him. If a stranger needs clothes, I will given them the shirt off my back. You could say that I do good deeds religiously! But frankly, if my neighbor is happy using Xing, Blade, r3mix, or even (gasp) Windows Media, I really don't have a "problem" with that. I'm CERTAINLY NOT going to lose any sleep over it.

Originally posted by layer3maniac Friend? Do we know each other?.....if my neighbor is happy using Xing, Blade, r3mix, or even (gasp) Windows Media, I really don't have a "problem" with that.

1) Sorry, it's just a common expression where I come from. 2) If there is an instance where somebody is happy using Xing, r3mix, etc. and who has been harassed by those of us who know better, I am not aware of it. I don't have a problem with anything anyone does - whether its audio compression or anything else. But if they care about what they're doing, and want to do the best they can with the time they have to spend on a project, then that's a different matter - and those are the people who are referred to here. It's assumed (I assume) that people care whether or not one method is better than the other, or they wouldn't be hanging around here in the first place.

Originally posted by Dibrom Nobody wants to remove --r3mix because it might "hurt" Roel. To that I say: WTF?

I certainly don't mind about Roel's ego. But I really don't want to know just how many support mails I'd get if --r3mix would disappear. No thanks. I'd have no problem, though, if --r3mix would issue a warning and be remapped to aps.

And Dibrom, --r3mix might not be perfect, but it certainly would be better to get r3mix encoded files then 128 kbit, and that's just what e.g. EMusic and many many other sites are [b]selling.

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How do you go from disabling non-optimal code in LAME to instead pointing people towards Vorbis? That makes absolutely no sense.

That was may attempt to irony, you know...

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My original intentions were, believe it or not, to actually work with Roel.

I know, I've been there. But it came as no big surprise to me that it didn't work out. In my eyes, you and Roel are very much alike, you both have very strong egos.

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If people want to recommend newbies to r3mix.net, there's nothing anyone can really do to stop it. However, this person is making a big mistake, and in the end it's only going to come back to be harmful to the community and to promote the kind of thinking we've been subjected to lately on Slashdot and Arstechnica. Oh well..

What's this? A personal attack against me, because I still recommend r3mix.net side by side with HA? So you're saying that I am being harmful to the community by doing so, that I'm making a big mistake?

Now, who's ego are we talking about, Dibrom? Roels, mine or yours?

Someone else said it before: let's close this and the Blade thread, it's turning into a flamewar. I for sure won't answer to any of them any more, although I'm sure that Dibrom will post a long answer telling me where I'm completely wrong again, and that it's nothing to do with his ego at all.

Don't get me wrong, Dibrom, you're doing some great services to the audio encoding scene, but sometimes you're coming over as undiplomatic as Roel to me.

Well, if you already think 128kbps is transparent, I see no sense in restarting encoding because someone else said there is a better way. If you always goes with what someone else says, you won't ever finish encoding your CD collection.

What I mean: If you have all your encodings in --r3mix and you are satisfied with that, why reencode with --aps? There will be no difference for you.

Damn, Roberto is a wise man.

So now everything is said and done lets all reencode to ogg vorvis. j/k

Well, if you already think 128kbps is transparent, I see no sense in restarting encoding because someone else said there is a better way. If you always goes with what someone else says, you won't ever finish encoding your CD collection.

What I mean: If you have all your encodings in --r3mix and you are satisfied with that, why reencode with --aps? There will be no difference for you.

Well, the reason why everyone should encode their music in reasonable quality is because people tend to share their music for others.. Even if you are a person who enjoys music and only download because you want to hear how it sounds before you buy it, you still want good quality... I get discusted with the general audio quality people use, everytime I myself download files just to listen if the music is any good... For them, 128 kbit Xing sounds good, but not for me and it really lowers the "enjoyment factor" of the music which in turn can change my decision of buying the music... (Not that Lame --alt-preset 128 is that bad, but 128 kbit Xing/BladeEnc/Music Match, etc, really are bad...)